In my judgment, after a not very long experience I must admit, but a sorry one, in some instances, there is but one way in which this matter of expert evidence should be conducted.  The judge should appoint three experts, one of them at the suggestion of the counsel upon either side, and the third one at his own discretion.  These three appointees should present their report in writing to the court, and the compensation for the service should be equally divided between the parties interested.  In that way can expert evidence escape the disrepute now attaching to it, and the ends of justice be furthered.  Now, gentlemen, the hour is getting late, and I have but one wish to express to you.  The medical profession of the State of New York has an organization very similar to your own, which has now reached very nearly its ninetieth year, with a membership of almost 1,000, and with an annual attendance something double that of your own.  I can only hope that your Association may live on and develop until it reaches as vigorous and flourishing an old age as that of the medical profession. [Applause.]

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

THE RISE OF “THE ATLANTIC”

[Speech of Charles Dudley Warner at the “Whittier Dinner” in celebration of the poet’s seventieth birthday and the twentieth birthday of “The Atlantic Monthly,” given by the publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., at Boston, Mass., December 17, 1877.]

MR. CHAIRMAN:—­It is impossible to express my gratitude to you for calling on me.  There is but one pleasure in life equal to that of being called on to make an after-dinner speech, and that is not being called on.  It is such an enjoyment to sit through the courses with this prospect like a ten-pound weight on your digestive organs!  If it were ever possible to refuse anything in this world, except by the concurrence of the three branches of government—­the executive, the obstructive, and the destructive, I believe they are called—­I should hope that we might some time have our speeches first, so that we could eat our dinner without fear or favor.

I suppose, however, that I am called up not to grumble, but to say that the establishment of “The Atlantic Monthly” was an era in literature.  I say it cheerfully.  I believe, nevertheless, it was not the first era of the sort.  The sanguine generations have been indulging in them all along, and as “eras” they are apt to flat out, or, as the editor of the “Atlantic” would say, they “peter out.”  But the establishment of the “Atlantic” was the expression of a genuine literary movement.  That movement is the most interesting because it was the most fruitful in our history.  It was nicknamed transcendentalism.  It was, in fact, a recurrence to realism.  They who were sitting in Boston saw a great light.  The beauty of this new realism was that it required imagination, as it always does,